The call center – it’s where the magic happens.
Effectively the virtual front door to an organisation; it provides the critical interface between a brand and its customers.
The type and quality of those communicative interactions are often today’s differentiators: the agents that process them responsible for the resultant outcomes.
So, with many of those agents now working remotely, how do you get the best from them?
Here, Robert Luciani, Client Support Desk Function Owner at global enterprise-class contact center provider ComputerTalk, shares his top five tips that deliver big…
Transparency
“Working from home can be isolating. Agents are no longer sat alongside each other in offices with supervisors navigating the floor for support. If someone needs support on a specific case they’re dealing with, they have to proactively engage me rather than me engaging them. Providing the entire team with complete visibility of each other’s workload and activity is a great way of ensuring everyone feels connected. Everyone can see when people are on different states; whether a particular person is overloaded; and when to reach out to their colleagues to give support. I give everyone access to our monitor boards too so they have full view of all the contacts in the queue. That transparency means there’s less conflict between agents because they can look at the stats and know their co-workers are working as hard as they are. This reduces the animosity within the team and pushes members to stay consistent with their workload.”
Communication
“Groups in Microsoft Teams is a brilliant way of providing a platform for real-time agent interaction. Agents are able to step up and say: ‘Hey, you know what, I can see you’ve got a lot going on, let me take more of these calls.’ I also have special ‘not ready’ codes so agents can see when colleagues are in meetings or following-up with customers or engaged on high priority issues. Creating that kind of cooperative, collaborative environment can give agents confidence to speak up and contribute positively to their shift. It’s really easy to type those messages; the functionality is right there at their fingertips and it helps keep a positive dialogue going. When agents and supervisors are able to talk to each other so easily like that, it not only builds strong working relationships but it also has a positive impact on the service they deliver. Giving your agents the correct tools to communicate easily and effectively significantly improves the atmosphere within the team.”
Team Spirit
“Transparency and communication help build a strong sense of belonging and togetherness. They help teams recognise and understand their colleagues’ workloads and issues and, in turn, that helps foster a shared sense of purpose. That is extra important when teams work remotely and don’t have any personal, physical interaction in the way they used to. An agent who doesn’t feel isolated and who feels part of a team will have a positive attitude towards their work. If they run into troubles with a customer and need to reach out for support, they get it. If you have a happy team, you stand much more of a chance of retaining those people. Also, happy agents deliver better customer service.”
Hardware
“Connectivity, headsets, microphones – their quality really matters to the contact center team. Call drop and poor audio are both hugely frustrating for agents, as well as callers. VoIP out-performs traditional telephony by a huge distance; providing much stronger, more reliable and higher-quality connectivity and call quality. Everyone has had that poor experience of calling into a contact center and barely being able to hear or understand the agent. It impacts negatively on the caller’s view of that organisation. But, for the agent, it also sends out a negative message that the organisation is not prepared to invest in providing the best tools and hardware to support them in their role. Make that investment and the opposite is the case: agents feel valued and they perform better.”
Automation
“IVR can dramatically improve productivity, efficiency and the interaction experience for both agent and caller. A contact center that just takes calls and queues them immediately to human agents with no IVR will require one agent for every three customers that call in. Deploying IVR to process the common and simple things like password resets, PIN changes or answering Frequently Asked Questions can be a game-changer. The number of customers that require in-person experiences is massively reduced so the organisation only needs one agent for every 20 or 30 callers. That streamlining optimises the business, frees agents to deal with the more complex and interesting interactions, and, again, provides the customer with an improved experience.”
To learn more about how Computer Talk can help your or your customers’ organisation deliver the best possible contact center experience, visit www.computer-talk.com
